July 2004

It's interesting: videos like these – made by Tube drivers in the tunnels under London as they route trains through the stations of the city – became controversial last week... but not for the reason I would have expected.

On Thursday, the BBC reported that "Tube drivers caught video-recording their journey and posting them on the internet could face disciplinary action" – and so my immediate thought was that this was because the videos would compromise Tube security. In other words, wannabe terrorists would simply study these and othersuch videos in order to find points of vulnerability in London's infrastructure: soft spots, weaknesses, CCTV-free zones.But no: apparently the real worry is that the drivers aren't paying attention. As one commuter explained to the BBC: "I'll wait for the next [train] because I feel the driver isn't focused and not doing what he should be doing."After all, instead of paying attention to sudden and inexplicable deviations in the tracks ahead, the driver's too busy constructing a new subterranean Hollywood-on-Thames, cinematically mobile in the curved underworld of greater London.

amazing. i never assumed driving a train was all that difficult to begin with, but it seems pretty obvious on viewing that the camera isn't handheld and is simply fixed in a position and turned on. how distracting is that to a driver? by that logic all the cops in the united states who ride with cameras recording in their polic cars should be suspended. and then where would "world's scariest police chases" be?

Come on guys. You write from the USA, forgetting that the UK is probably the nation which has the record of cameras per square meter. That might be useful (and certainly is) but it also so much reminds of Orwell's nasty television spying! It's enough of the useless WWW. Sometimes, honestly, it's too much. Besides, the tube in the UK is USELESS! The drivers'd better try and improve their service rather than filming tunnels, honestly.

But now that I look into it, those aerial videos have disappeared from the Grass Collective site. Maybe an industrious helicopter traffic reporter flying over the San Diego freeway will make their own and upload it to Youtube.

About BLDGBLOG

BLDGBLOG ("building blog") is written by Geoff Manaugh. The opinions expressed here are my own; they do not reflect the views of my friends, editors, employers, publishers, or colleagues, with whom this blog is not affiliated. More.